Employee denies he told Obeids of mine

Senior Reporter

Not true ... a former employee of the Obeid family has denied Moses Obeid's claims. Photo: Dean Sewell

A FORMER employee of the Obeid family has denied comments attributed to him by the former Labor MP Eddie Obeid and his son Moses in a recent newspaper article, a corruption inquiry has heard.

In ''We didn't know about licences, the Obeids claim'', published in The Australian last last month, Mr Obeid and his son Moses claimed they only found out about the possibility of a mine on their property in early 2008 after the property's manager relayed a rumour he'd heard in the local pub.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption is investigating allegations that Mr Obeid subverted a 2008 government coal mining tender by using inside information provided to him by the then mining minister Ian Macdonald. The Obeid family is alleged to have purchased properties in the Bylong area before the government announced it was opening the area for coal exploration. The Obeids stood to make a colossal windfall of $100 million, the inquiry has heard.

Moses Obeid was quoted in the The Australian as saying, ''Our general manager on the farm, Noel Taylor, every Friday, he loved to go into the pub at Rylstone.

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''And it was one day, after being at the pub, he had come up to my older brother Damien who was at the farm, and informed him that he had heard rumours in the pub that a huge mine was coming to Bylong and it would be in the next five years.''

But Mr Taylor told the inquiry on Thursday there was no truth in the Obeids' claims to the newspaper.

Mr Taylor said he was the gardener at the property at Bylong, not the general manager, and that he had been to the Rylstone pub ''I'd say about five times in 25 years''. He also denied telling Damien Obeid a huge mine was coming.

Mr Taylor denied he had been sacked by the Obeids. He said he stopped working as the gardener about two years ago because his three-year contract had expired.

The Obeid family attacked media reporting of its financial dealings, made public on Wednesday, which revealed $18 million held in the Obeid Family Trust No.1 being distributed to various members of the family.

Stuart Littlemore, QC, who is representing Mr Obeid, had unsuccessfully sought to have the details of the trust accounts suppressed. But Commissioner David Ipp said the accounts were in the public interest. ''While details might be embarrassing, I do not regard them as being capable of causing the Obeid family any material harm.''

But Mr Littlemore complained of the ''appalling prurience'' with which the Telegraph subsequently reported details of the Obeid Family Trust No.1.

Rejecting Mr Littlemore's claim, Commissioner Ipp said evidence given to the inquiry ''is capable of being construed as meaning that assets of the state which should have been utilised on behalf of the state in a proper, ethical and fair way have been used in a different way and persons have utilised enormous financial benefits as a result''.

The inquiry heard some of the millions received by the Obeid family from secret investments in coal dealings were spent on a luxury Mercedes-Benz for Mr Obeid and $400,000 for his wife, Judith, for a deposit on a waterfront mansion.

Mr Obeid and his five sons - Damien, Moses, Paul, Gerard and Eddie jnr - are due to give evidence next week.